song at the proper season; and when is the suitable season? asks the angry author impatiently. Why, sir, that's a secret, and your true editor never blabs. Like another craft and mystery, we plume ourselves upon maintaining the profoundest secrecy, whenever HONOUR bids.

We are just and sincere

And true to the fair,

They'll trust us on every œccasion; ·

No mortal can more

The ladies adore

Than a free and an accepted mason.

TO THE PUBLIC.

TIME, with inaudible step, has slyly come up, and introduced us to a new born July, who seems to be a character auspicious, generous, and genial. Though but an infant, he, however, seems to be endowed with much of the vigor of maturer years, and though his temper is warm, and sometimes a little too ardent, we hope that both we and others may find him a tolerable companion, which is as much as can reasonably be expected in the ordinary intercourse of life. This same July admonishes us by looks and gestures, for, it must be confessed he does not speak very plainly, that having tra velled, without much quarrelling, with his six elder brothers, we must go on rejoicing with the rest of the family. For it seems, from the best authority, that the family of the year, like the family of the Patriarch, consists of twelve; and, without any monitor, it is our sincere wish to be upon terms of amity and love with all the brethren.

Thus far, we have spoken in parables. But, in language more intelligible to the majority, we simply state, that, according to edi torial usage, sanctioned by Custom, perhaps, rather than by Reason, we come out of our cloister, to tell the public, what they know already, that in the year of our Lord, 1810, we have finished one volume, and began another. After this clear enunciation of a mere

matter of fact, we make a bow as low as the dignity of cavaliers will possibly permit; and regretting that we have not achieved exploits more illustrious in the Annals of Literature, we most cordially thank our splendid compatriots and munificent patrons for their assistance, urbanity and favour. On our part, though doomed often to struggle with Sickness, a most formidable adversary, and with some other Powers of a character equally tremendous, we will, with the gallant, undaunted, and high spirited MILTON, endeavour sturdily to lose no jot of heart or hope, but persevere in humble attempts, however awkward, and however embarrassed, to please THE AMERICAN NATION. Our task is arduous, and we are not unconscious of its high responsibility. The era seems rapidly approaching, when, in spite of the blind Ignorance of some, and the bigotted Prejudice of others, the reign of Good Taste and Polite Literature will be absolutely asserted in America. To accelerate the advancement of an epoch, so glorious, is one of the first wishes of

THE EDITOR.

VARIETY.

HENKY WHITE, a man of genius and a valetudinarian, remarkable for the accuracy and amenity of his style, at a very juvenile age, thus vividly describes some of the tortures to which distempered Sensibility is doomed. The picture of his sufferings is truly dismal, but the tints, however sombre, are the colours, not of Fancy but of Truth.

The state of my health is really miserable; I am well and lively in the morning, and overwhelmed with nervous horrors in the evening. A very slight overstretch of the mind in the day time occasions me not only a sleepless night, but a night of gloom and terror. The systole and diastole of my heart seem to be playing at ball-the stake-my life; I can only say the game is not yet decided. I allude to the frightful violence of the palpitation.

I am going to mount the Gog-magog hills this morning, in quest of a good night's sleep. The Gog-magog hills for my body, and * THE BIBLE FOR MY MIND are my only medicines.

In Bolingbroke's Reflections on Exile, which is perhaps the most eloquent of the miscellaneous tracts of that fervid writer, we find the following passage than which there is nothing more animated, no, not in Cicero.

How comes it to pass that such numbers of men by choice live out of their country? Observe how the streets of London and of Paris are crowded. Call over by name those millions, and ask them, one by one, of what country they are, how many will you find, who, from different parts of the earth, come to inhabit these great cities which afford the largest opportunities and the largest encouragement to virtue and to vice. Some are allured by ambition, and some are urged by duty; many resort thither to improve their minds, and many to improve their fortunes; others bring their beauty, and others their eloquence to market, remove hence, and go to the utmost extremities of the east or the west: visit the barbarous nations of Africa, or the inhospitable regions of the north. You will find no climate so bad, no country so savage as not to have some people who come from abroad, and inhabit there by choice.

Among numberless extravagancies, which have passed through the minds of men we may justly reckon for one, that notion of a secret affection, independent of our reason, and superior to our reason, which we are supposed to have

* A more efficacious, nay a more elegant prescription could not be proposed by the most philosophical of physicians. It is of more value than all the balm of Gilead, all the barks of Quito, and all the poppies of Turkey. The Editor avails himself, with alacrity, of every opportunity to testify his belief of that blessed book, the BIBLE. He speaks of it seriously and experimentally, not in the tones of cant, but of truth and admiration. His testimony on the side of the gospel may have the more weight, when it is remembered that it is the testimony of a layman, and, consequently, is pure from every professional, or interested bias. His exalted opinion both of the matter and style of the sacred scriptures is the result of an habitual application to the subject of all his powers of analysis, and of the most absolute conviction of the truth, as well as of the beauty, variety, grandeur and sublimity of a volume, that shines with no factitious splendour, but in whose immaculate page the diligent student and sincere inquirer may, in the bleakest hours of adversity, always find the first and fairest topics of consolation.

Note, by the Editor of the Port Folio,

for our country; as if there were some physical virtue in every spot of gròund, which necessarily produced this effect in every one born upon

it:

As if the maladie du Pays was a universal distemper, inseparable from the constitution of a human body, and not peculiar to the Swiss, who seem to have been made for their mountains, as their mountains seem to have been made for them. This notion may have contributed to the security and grandeur of states; it has, therefore, been not unartfully cultivated, and the prejudice of education has been with care put on its side. Men have come, in this case, as in many, from believing that it ought to be so, to persuade others, and even to believe themselves that it is so. But there is nothing more groundless than this notion, and nothing more absurd. We love the country, in which we are born, because we receive particular benefits from it, and because we have particular obligations to it: which ties we may have to another country as well as to that we are born in: to our country by election, as well as to our country by birth. In all other respects, a wise man looks on himself as a citizen of the world; and when you ask him where his country lies, he points, like Anaxagoras, with his finger to the heavens.

There is no habit, however inveterate, which cannot be cured by vigorous exertion. Let the patient strive to cure himself by administering alterative and potent medicines, and his appetites will no longer torment him. After breaking these chains, his mind will return to its proper object with a kind of intellectual clasticity,

The duke de Crillon was at Avignon when the duke of Ormond died there, and having entered his chamber at the very moment when the latter was dying, he had nearly been witness. to a remarkable scene which had just taken place between the expiring nobleman, who was a true pattern of politeness, and a German baron, also one of the most polite men of his country. The duke feeling himself dying desired to be conveyed to his arm chair; when turning towards the baron, Excuse me, sir,, said he, if I should make some grimaces in your presence, but my physician tells me that I am at the point of death. Ah, my lord duke, replied the baron, I beg that you will not put your self under any constraint on my account.

SUPPLEMENT

TO THE PORT FOLIO FOR JULY, 1810.

FEMALE EDUCATION.

THE ordinary and indispensable routine of business imperiously requiring of us to prepare and print our Monthly Miscellany sometime prior to the period of publication, compels us, when copious articles are tardily furnished, to print them in the style of a supplement. But this very circumstance, far from degrading the essays in question, is a lucid proof of our eagerness to exhibit to the public, with all possible celerity, whatever may be brilliant in the eye of Fancy, or be ratified by the severity of Judgment.

Few papers of the didactic character, we presume, could be more agreeable to the tastes and sentiments of our readers than the following. The topic is confessedly important; and, what is not always the case with many other, subjects of similar utility, excites a vivid interest and attracts a very gene. ral attention. Indeed, an astonishing revolution of sentiment and of practice with respect to the education of women has, of late, been accomplished in America. It would not be uncharitable to assert that not many years have elapsed since many men of the most enlightened minds were guilty of a strange departure from the softness and gallantry of civilization, by cherishing the savage idea of the moral inferiority of the sex. Unhappily, men have acted in the spirit of this ungracious creed. In a large portion of this country, women have been disgraced and degraded in consequence of the neglect, indifference, or tyranny of man. It is within our remembrance when a girl of the brightest talents had no other discipline than what the narrowest school could bestow. To read and spell without much hesitation; to trace a character in penmanship, which if not absolutely cramp, was almost unintelligible; and to cipher, God knows how, through the four first rules of no ambitious arithmetic, constituted once the sum total of female education in America. Hence, a dismal train of consequences the most deplorable. While the ladies were thus "steeped in Ignorance to the very lips," while they were thus systematically shut out of Minerva's Temple, what was the genuine classification and description of any individual of the sex, but that of a washing, baking, brewing, spinning, sewing, darning and child-producing animal?

Let us not be misunderstood as casting censure upon the duties of the good housewife. All her useful arts are equally praiseworthy and indispensable.